


sort of like that disney movie the 13th year

by kingsoftheimpossible



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Mermaids
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-30
Updated: 2015-06-30
Packaged: 2018-04-07 01:10:25
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,755
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4243764
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kingsoftheimpossible/pseuds/kingsoftheimpossible
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s not that Zayn can’t swim so much as he’s never had a reason to try.  (a cross-posted tumblr ficlet)</p>
            </blockquote>





	sort of like that disney movie the 13th year

**Author's Note:**

> originally written [here](http://tippingvelvets.tumblr.com/post/106459683109/zouis-23-plz)

It’s not that Zayn _can’t_ swim so much as he’s never had a reason to _try_. He _could_ swim. Probably. If he had to. If there was a _really good_ reason.

The Really Good Reason comes in the form of Louis’ 13th birthday.

They’ve been friends since before they knew what friends were, and it’s strange that Louis doesn’t show up on Zayn’s doorstep on December 24th, demanding attention and gifts and coddling, the same as he does every year. It’s strange enough that Zayn isn’t really sure how to proceed- wonders if they might be fighting and he missed it, or if Louis finally became a Grown-Up overnight.

Around noon, Zayn finally gathers enough courage to make his way down the block to Louis’ house and knock quietly at the front door. He doesn’t really expect an answer as you can’t do much of anything _quietly_ in the Tomlinson household and expect results. When a polite amount of time elapses (15 seconds, give or take), he lets himself in.

He hears Louis’ younger sisters chattering away in the lounge and Jay puttering around in the kitchen, but no sign of Louis. A quick dash up the stairs shows Louis’ bedroom door slung wide open (a sure sign that he is Not Inside, because only _nerds_ hang around with their doors open), but the bathroom door is shut tight.

Maybe Louis got a stomach flu for his birthday. Just his luck, honestly.

Zayn tiptoes across the creaky landing to the bathroom door, trying not to alert the herd of young girls down below to his presence. The eldest has gone a bit weird over him in the last year, and he’s frankly not sure what to do with that, so he avoids it. 

He’s much too busy going a bit weird himself over Louis. 

Karma, maybe. 

He raps his knuckles softly against the bathroom door, pressing his ear close enough to catch the sound of gently sloshing water.

“Lou?” he whispers, because Tomlinsons may demand a certain volume Zayn doesn’t possess, but Louis’ always been good at keeping an ear out for him anyway. “Bro, you in there?”

He relishes getting to say _bro,_ loves how it feels, all casual and cool. He isn’t supposed to use slang around his own house, but Louis’ mom never cares.

“Zayn?” Louis’ voice is the same as it was yesterday, when he was safely on _this side_ of his teens with Zayn. It actually sounds even higher, which from those freaky puberty videos they all had to watch in school isn’t at all what’s meant to happen if Louis is like, a man now, or whatever. “Um- don’t come in-”

Zayn snorts. That’s probably the stupidest thing Louis has ever said, which is really impressive if you know _half_ as many of the stupid things Louis’ said as Zayn does. “Why not?” Zayn asks, already gripping the door knob and twisting experimentally, expecting it to be locked, but-

It pops right open, and there’s Louis, sprawled out in the bathtub.

Or actually, there’s _half_ of Louis sprawled out in the bathtub, and then half of a very large fish. And they’re connected somehow. Zayn’s glad the doorframe is steady or else he’d probably be passed out on the floor.

“Louis?” he asks, strangled, _scared._

Louis just rolls his eyes, clearly braver than he feels. “Happy birthday to me,” he sings sarcastically, and his tail moodily splashes about a gallon of water out of the tub. 

* * *

It’s funny, actually, how little changes once you find out your best friend is a mermaid. They go from spending their afternoons at the skate park to spending it at the rocky beach where the water is almost always too cold for anyone but Louis.

“Why don’t you just stay out of the water?” Zayn asks grumpily, refusing to look at Louis’ very human toes digging in the sand since he knows they’ll be gone in a matter of minutes anyway, once Louis touches the surf.

They’re seventeen and eighteen, and Zayn always wonders why Louis hasn’t found a friend who can swim better and actually enjoys the beach, someone who could keep up with him.

“Can’t,” Louis says simply, gaze already on the horizon, thirsty. He gets like that when he sees the ocean, faraway, eyes like a mirror where Zayn just _isn’t._ “I’m made for the open water, babe.” He laughs at himself like it’s a joke instead of a very real, true statement that makes Zayn’s insides curl up and shrivel whenever he thinks about it. When Louis finally tears his eyes away from the waves, he looks surprised to see Zayn sitting on the beach, fully dressed. “You not coming out today?” He’s teasing, knows Zayn can only just barely swim, even after years of coaching. Knows he hates it, even when he does venture out. 

“Coursework,” Zayn answers vaguely, nodding at his art satchel stuffed with pens and notebooks.

“Suit yourself.”

Louis’ gone just like that, only so much sand kicked up in Zayn’s face, a splash in the shallows that gets covered up by the steadily crashing tide. Zayn carefully unpacks his things, settles back against one of the large seaweedy boulders, and waits.

It’s often hours and hours before Louis comes back to shore, face-plants in the sand and gasps through the slits in the sides of his neck until his body gets the hint and changes back. When they were younger, Zayn had asked him how it felt- the changing.

“Changing back? Feels all wrong,” Louis’d said, fresh off his fourteenth birthday. “I just know this isn’t what I’m supposed to be, you know? Like if I was just meant to be a person,” he’d scrunched his nose up in distaste, staring down at his own legs like they were foreign to him, “then why would the water feel like-”

“Like?” Zayn’d prompted, desperate. That was the year he’d waited with bated breath for Louis to leave him behind.

“Home.” The word popped out so quickly it was clear Louis’d thought about it a lot, more than he’d ever spoken to Zayn about it.

“Well if it’s home, why don’t you just stay there?” Zayn had meant to sound cruel and petulant and like he didn’t care, not one bit, not at all. The crying probably gave it away though. He’d always been terrible about crying when he was trying to be tough.

“If I stayed there, where would that leave you?” Louis’d asked, laughing and rolling his eyes. “I’m not going to let you stay up here by yourself and turn into a huge fucking loser. I’ve invested a lot of time in you, Malik. You’re my protege.”

Louis always used to talk big like that, more than half the words out his mouth complete bullshit. He talks less now, softened by growing up and, Zayn can only guess, finding a bit of peace in the water.

It’s hard, though, being the one left on shore. Knowing he couldn’t follow if he tried.

It’s nearly dark when Louis crawls up the beach and collapses beside Zayn, dripping and cold to the touch, gills gasping shallowly until they aren’t anymore, and he presses his face into Zayn’s side.

“Hate this fucking part,” Louis murmurs, chuckling wetly until Zayn’s jacket is soaked through from Louis’ hair and the water streaming out of his mouth and eyes. _Like drowning in reverse_ , he’d called it once.

“Then stay,” Zayn says easily, cool like he doesn’t care. He’s gotten better at saying things he doesn’t mean. He’s well-tough now.

“I already told you, I can’t-” Louis starts, sounding irritated, like he doesn’t want to have this conversation for the four-thousandth fucking time. Zayn knows that feeling.

“Not up here,” he says, cutting Louis off, shrugging his bag onto his shoulder and preparing to stand. “Down there.”

Louis rolls onto his back and blinks up at Zayn critically. He’s always impossible to look at after he’s been in the sea. His hair is a wild halo and his eyes look  _deep._ Bottomless. He fucking _glows_.

_That must be what people who’ve found where they belong look like_. Zayn’s thought that for years but never said. He thinks it every time Louis comes up from the ocean.

“I can’t do that either,” Louis says after a long stretch of quiet. “And you don’t want me to,” he adds, voice the tiniest bit forceful.

“I might,” Zayn shrugs, “someday.”

Louis just shakes his head, frowning. “I wish you’d swim with me. You always get caught up in your own head when you stay up here.”

That’s the crux of it, though. Zayn _can’t._ Louis goes places Zayn’s body physically can’t reach. It’s never been about Zayn choosing to stay on the beach- there’s just nowhere else for him to go. If he leaves the beach, Louis might just never come back to shore, might forget he has a reason to come on dry land. If he goes out in the water, he’ll lose sight of Louis anyway, the water too dark and too deep, the salt stinging his eyes blind. The beach is the only place he can stay.

“I’d stay with you, you know.” Louis’ voice is as soft as Zayn’s ever heard it, barely audible over the waves crashing on the sand. “I wouldn’t let you get lost out there.”

“Maybe,” Zayn says, finally getting to his feet and holding out a hand to haul Louis up beside him. His legs never work right for a few hours after changing back, wobbly like a little duck. “I just worry about you.”

“I worry about you, too,” Louis says defensively, letting Zayn wedge a shoulder underneath his armpit while he slings one arm around his neck. They shuffle back to the beat up Mystery Machine like that, unlock the back doors and collapse together onto the plush carpet that’s been desperately in need of a cleaning since well before either of them were born.

Louis falls asleep right away, exhausted from the hours he spent under the surface doing god knows what, and Zayn leans against the van’s stripped metal interior and sketches him, tries to capture that _glow_ , the way the sea doesn’t leave Louis right away.

It’s nice, Zayn thinks absently, that he glows even here, in the shitty van they bought together. Maybe that means something. He lets the thought settle while he smears charcoal across paper, trying to get the heavy lines beneath Louis’ eyes _just right._


End file.
